Skepticism

EVENTS

Rush Limbaugh isn’t the only moron out there, unfortunately

I’ll say one thing for Rush Limbaugh: he just cracked the sewer valve wide open, but he’s not the only one contributing to the gusher of sewage. Take Bryan Fischer: he’s even worse than that slick pig Limbaugh. He thinks there’s nothing wrong with what Limbaugh said, and acknowledges, like Limbaugh, that the only thing he did wrong was use the “slut” word, which is naughty…but that his sentiment was entirely correct.

Here’s his interpretation of Sandra Fluke’s testimony. He is shocked that:

…this woman could, without any trace of shame, any trace of embarrassment, give open testimony before the entire United States of America, about how much promiscuous sex she and her classmates are having.

Of course, that’s not what she testified. She testified that women’s reproductive health could be expensive, citing the use of contraceptives for prevention of ovarian cysts. But she could have talked about the importance of contraception for a healthy, happy sex life even within a monogamous relationship: it does not make a woman a slut for enjoying sex with her partner. But even if she did have multiple partners, so what? There’s no shame in enjoying sex: every human does, unless they’re wracked with religious guilt.

It really exposes these people for what they are: anti-sex, anti-human prudes. Fuck the Puritans. Please.

And here’s another idiotic perspective on Fluke from Scott Adams, Dilbonian dimbulb. He sees two possible interpretations.

Which of these two events do you find more distasteful?

1. Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut for her position on contraceptives.

Or

2. Activists are treating Fluke as a helpless victim who needs society’s protection against the harsh words of an entertainer.

My interpretation of events is that Limbaugh saw Fluke as a capable adult, and a public figure, tough enough to handle some harsh language. The boycotters apparently see Fluke as more of an endangered child, or a helpless damsel in distress, threatened by a monster. Light the torches and launch the boycott!

Adams has always been this clueless. I don’t know of a single person who has responded to this by thinking that Fluke needs our protective embrace: she seems confident and mature. The reaction has been anti-Limbaugh. He has been exposed as a blue-nosed asshole who despises women in general — not specifically Sandra Fluke — who have a healthy attitude towards sex, who treat it as a reasonable and expected and even joyful aspect of normal behavior, rather than something to hide in shame.

That’s the battle. Not some peculiar chauvinistic idea that one poor woman needs our chivalrous shelter. I suspect Adams is just projecting.

Hate to defend #RushLimbaugh but he apologized, liberals looking bad not accepting. Also hate intimidation by sponsor pullout

He did not apologize for despising women who enjoy sex or need medical assistance in maintaining their reproductive health; clearly, he still feels that’s a valid stance. He only apologized for using words like “slut” instead of being more formal and calling her a harlot or something similarly antiquated. Jon Stewart got this right: what’s wrong with Maher that he can’t see this?

As someone who also says things on behalf of a minority that a majority finds offensive, I sympathize with the detestation of “intimidation by sponsor pullout” — but the problem lies in the reliance on money to fund free speech, and coupling that to selling soap. What Limbaugh said is still wrong and stupid.

I cannot fathom being that deranged in my outlook on (and perception of) life. Do they so desperately want women to not be counted as people? Is there something buried in their shriveled brains that auto-censors the actual medical concerns that are being outlined here? Also, whatever consenting adults consent to with one another is exactly no one else’s business save for those doing the consenting. Rrrrrggghhh!!!

Umm, I know asexuals are a minority but can you leave out that bit please? Religious guilt has nothing to do with my being totally unable to enjoy any form of sexual activity. (I don’t find it disgusting, I just find it boring. Like watching-paint-dry boring)

As a woman who takes the Pill for health reasons I’m still a dirty, dirty slut in the eyes of these arseholes though. A dirty, dirty slut who is more ‘chaste’ than the most fundie xtian!

Take Bryan Fischer: he’s even worse than that slick pig Limbaugh. He thinks there’s nothing wrong with what Limbaugh said, and acknowledges, like Limbaugh, that the only thing he did wrong was use the “slut” word, which is naughty…but that his sentiment was entirely correct.

How typical of a fundie – get the vapours over a bad word but completely ignore the truly toxic sentiment that underpins Limbaugh’s blather; the idea that sex is shameful and that any woman who embraces and enjoys her sexuality should be villified.

These bigoted cretins really do hate and fear female sexuality, and seem incapable of actually viewing women as human at all. To Limbaugh and his ilk, women are either morally corrupting sirens to be repudiated or disposeable baby-making machines, but never simply people.

The demonstration of this particular form of shitheaddery (“women who enjoy sex are defacto sluts”) stands in stark contrast to some advertising I see on television.

The good folks at Trojan and KY have many, many commercials wherein a happy, heterosexual couple–often very ordinary-looking–are thrilled to pieces by a new product that enhances their sexual enjoyment. Many of these ads specifically tout how much the product will increase the woman’s enjoyment.

I saw one last night that wasn’t even a couple–it was a young, pretty woman, dressed in sexy pajamas, in her bedroom, touting the benefits of a particular brand of condom. She even says, “I like sex” in a very positive, affirming way. (I’m starting to wonder if maybe it was a fake ad, but it didn’t seem so.)

Maybe it’s because I watch too much Comedy Central and Cartoon Network.

But I wonder – was his Viagra covered by his health insurance? I mean, did I help pay for Lush getting laid on his vacation (where are the videos, Lush?)
Because not getting it up is a serious health issue (all the men who run the health insurance companies agree on this), while women controlling their reproductive health is, well, not so much.
Was Lushy planning to hook up with some vacationer who had drunk a wee bit too much (like until she was blind); or did he plan to pay some local girl for her time (the desperation of poverty being the only reason she would ever agree to hook up with him).
Lushy, would you have called your “company” on that island paradise a “promiscuous slut” for using BC while having sex with you. Or would you have risked her getting pregnant and assumed responsibility for the child.

However… Progressives should double down on these issues as the more we emphasize the right’s position the more centrist and left leaning independents we can shift to our side and the better it looks for November.

My, oh my, Fischer is an idiot. After his repugnantly misogynist slut-shaming at the start of the video, he goes on to start ranting about ‘secular fundamentalists’, claiming that the worldview of secularists and left wing progressives is almost exactly the same as islamic fundamentalists – because militant islam is so sex-positive and feminist, don’t you know – and that such people intend to impose a secular form of ‘sharia’ (that is a monster of a non-sequitor right there) with punishments ‘as severe’ as those found in sharia law for any who incur the ‘fatwahs’ of the ‘secular imams’ – since of course being called out for your bigotry is exactly the same as being stoned to death or beheaded in then eyes of Fischer.

It seems that this character lost contact with reality quite some time ago.

The good folks at Trojan and KY have many, many commercials wherein a happy, heterosexual couple–often very ordinary-looking–are thrilled to pieces by a new product that enhances their sexual enjoyment.

I think there needs to be some clarification to why Rush’s apology doesn’t make sense or appear sincere to most English speakers. It’s really because Rush isn’t speaking English, but a closely related language called Conservitinglish. There is some overlap of words, but thee words don’t share the same meaning. Think of it, like the word coffee. In English “coffee” is a drink, but in Korean, “coffee” means “bloody nose.” So if your a Korean sadomasochistic and you demand a “coffee” in England, you’ll be disappointed. For example here are some words in Conservitinglish that sound like English words but have completely different meanings:

Slut [sluht] noun
1. to have a vagina.

Example. Mother Teresa was such a slut.

Whore [hoor] noun
1. a female human who speaks in public.
Verb, to whore; whoring; whored.
2. to speak in public as a female.

Example. That whore, Maya Angelou, was whoring at the Lincoln Center, and it was a sold out crowd.

Another potentially key split was by gender: Exit poll results found an exact even split between Santorum and Romney among men. By contrast, Romney held an 11-point lead over Santorum among working women in Ohio, and led by 14 points among non-married women – perhaps marking Santorum’s controversial comments on some women’s issues.

The Tea Party/GOP War on Women is costing them a lot of votes. There has been a marked gender disparity in voting patterns for decades.

Um, ok, what the hell? How am I a rape apologist? Also, by attacking me (that is, the manboy behind the computer screen, as opposed to the words as they stand) you’re ignoring the substance of my point.

Also, by attacking me (that is, the manboy behind the computer screen, as opposed to the words as they stand) you’re ignoring the substance of my point.

I don’t see that you’ve made a single substantial point in any comment in this thread. Given your contribution so far maybe you should quit while you’re…well it’s too late for you to get ahead, but I think you should cut your losses and STFU.

Um, ok, what history are you talking about dude? I recall saying something that was right, and then other people starting saying things that were wrong, and then I left the thread. Rape apologist, not so much.

Um, ok, well tbh, I tried to engage you guys intellectually in the Perspectives thread, but all I got were juvenile insults and then Red Letters threatened me with a banning. So I’m trying to engage on a more lighthearted, conversational level now.

I recall saying something that was right, and then other people starting saying things that were wrong, and then I left the thread.

Translation:
He ran into a thread wagging his tongue about things he knows shit about and then, when confronted with some actual facts, ran off without even trying to offer a meaningful contra argument that consists of anything more coherent than “men are tossed away like fruit today”.

Anyone else find it kind of sickly funny that men like Limbaugh who call women who aren’t ashamed of the very *idea* of sex “sluts” tend to be the same sort to have multiple wives and mistresses and expect those women to provide them with sexual gratification?

Oh wait, I don’t find that funny at all; it just makes me hate people.

By the way, I’d be careful about goading me into a debate. FYI, I have a high IQ, and I just got done reading the Canterbury Tales. My brain is firing on all cylinders, and let me tell you, it’s formidable.

Um, ok, well tbh, I tried to engage you guys intellectually in the Perspectives thread, but all I got were juvenile insults and then Red Letters threatened me with a banning

Reading that thread, no you didn’t. You didn’t offer a single argument for your position, you just kept asserting that our society is somehow more misandrist than misogynist. A quick glance at sexual assault and rape statistics is enough to seriously put that conclusion in doubt but you seem to have refused to even consider the fact that you might not have any idea what you’re talking about.

When reading something like that I automatically try to imagine what’s going through the head of the author. In your case the best I can come up with is that you think, “Well, rape isn’t such a big deal; don’t these people know that men get testicular cancer?!” You seem like a clueless narcissist in other words.

So I’m trying to engage on a more lighthearted, conversational level now.

You couldn’t engage intellectually (your fault, you didn’t offer any substantial arguments) so now you’re trying to make nice-nice. That’s not lighthearted, it’s just slimy.

If you want to make friends here you might want to acknowledge that you’re wrong about the misandry nonsense but I’m guessing you’re constitutionally incapable of admitting you’re wrong about that.

By the way, I’d be careful about goading me into a debate. FYI, I have a high IQ, and I just got done reading the Canterbury Tales. My brain is firing on all cylinders, and let me tell you, it’s formidable.

By the way, I’d be careful about goading me into a debate. FYI, I have a high IQ, and I just got done reading the Canterbury Tales. My brain is firing on all cylinders, and let me tell you, it’s formidable.

Coffee in koreanize english and bloody nose in Korean sound the same. “Kopi.” There is a slight vowel sound difference when Koreans say coffee “커피” and bloody nose “코피” that most english speakers don’t pick up on.

Maybe he’s in Canada at the moment? (Note: Video says to Canadians, “Sorry, this video is unavailable from your location.” And I’m too damned tired to jump through the hoops to find it, or one reasonably close to it, on the Canadian website.)

PZ, I think you missed an opportunity here. Both Stewart and Colbert did segments on Limbaugh on their Monday shows, and I think Colbert’s segment was superior. He pointed out much more clearly how empty Limbaugh’s non-apology was. As you say, Limbaugh apologized for using “those two words,” so Colbert edited together a bunch of Limbaugh’s statements that did not include the word slut or prostitute. It was very well done.

I don’t have a link to the segment on hand at the moment, but if you want to watch it, it is the first segment of Colbert’s Monday show. You can just start the complete episode and turn it off at the first break.

Um, well, if you want me to acknowledge misandry is “not real”, you’re out of luck, because that’s not true. I’ll concede that I was a bit overzealous, and I’ll admit that misogyny is more widespread. How’s that?

That works. I didn’t say misandry was “not real,” I said as you’ve now admitted that it’s (significantly) less prevalent than misogyny. And the real-world effects of misandry are practically nil as far as I can tell (as a straight, white man I haven’t noticed anyone treating me as the least bit “disposable”).

Arrgh…sometimes I’m so embarrassed to be a white male American that I’m ready to resign. Dick heads are everywhere.

The reason these dick heads think “I’m sorry” is good enough is because they have this idea of “forgiveness” so no matter what they do or say, just say “Oops, sorry” and everything will be alright. It’s sometimes known as Christianity.

It would be ironic, if it wasn’t so vile & ugly, that women who give men the sex they want (note that it is the man who wants it, in the traditional moralists view of sex) are labeled promiscuous & sluts. Not the man who wants it. I always hated that double standard.

But Lush is giving a case study of how traditional moral standards work. The more sexually moral a society expects its men and women to be, the more it needs a subclass of women to label “immoral”. Religious, political & social leaders realistically realize that many men cannot or will not control themselves, so a subclass of women is created who can be treated like garbage to protect the “good” women from these men.
Lushy is explaining that women like Fluke belong to this subclass and do not deserve the decency or respect that “good” women do. He & his ilk may need slutty women; they may use slutty women; but they have a right to treat them like garbage.

Matriarchy is a small insecure child looking for attention. All the responses are getting him (I’d guess) excited, it seems…

However, what this topic actually reveals is the religious craving for authority in all matters. Medical science has been very problematic for them (along with all other science) on this.

Let’s go back over 200 years and look at major epidemics. What, for example, was the common religious response to smallpox (or cowpox) vaccination?

The English theologians were most loudly represented by the Rev. Edward Massey, who in 1772 preached and published a sermon entitled “The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation.” In this he declared that Job’s distemper was probably confluent smallpox; that he had been inoculated doubtless by the devil; that diseases are sent by Providence for the punishment of sin; and that the proposed attempt to prevent them is “a diabolical operation.” – http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/whitem10.html – via wiki

See, if you got a disease, that was “divine judgment” and attempting to treat that disease was a sin against God. Likewise, the pain of childbirth was God’s punishment for Eve talking to the serpent, woo-hoo, etc. etc.

Modern day religious nuts take the same stance towards all potentially sexually transmitted diseases, from gonorrhea to AIDS – I’m surprised that the Catholic Church hasn’t tried to deny treatment of such diseases on religious grounds as well.

Of course, a microbiologist or virologist would also recommend against highly promiscuous sex due to the dangers involved (antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea is on the rise, by the way), but the goal there is to prevent spread of infection – and the recommendation would be for prospective sexual partners to get screened for diseases beforehand. Which is something else the Catholic Church would probably try to deny coverage of.

However, if the Catholic Church really wanted to go this Puritan route, they should require surgical castration of all clergymen, and recommend that all good Catholic men get their testicles cut off at puberty and have them stored in liquid nitrogen. They would then have no sinful temptation to worry about, and when the time came to procreate, their frozen sperm could be used for artificial insemination – no orgasm required! Why hasn’t anyone else thought of this? It would certainly undermine the charge of hypocritical bullshit-mongering.

Perhaps Santorum could demonstrate his purity and chastity by being the first to undergo the procedure? Or should Rush Limbaugh be the poster child?

OK, I have been the victim of gendered violence myself, so… the real-world effects of misandry aren’t nil. But sure, misogyny is more of a problem, FINE.

I’m impressed that you would admit that you’re wrong about this when you had such a full head of steam on this issue before, but please don’t ruin it by getting petulant about it. I’m not trying to deny the experience you keep alluding to, but that’s a two-way street. You need to acknowledge that a great many women are also victims of what you’re calling “gendered violence.” And misogyny leads to similar effects for men; men are frequently beat down for not adhering closely enough to some troglodyte’s definition of “masculine.”

I think misogyny has likely negatively affected you as well. Have you had the experience of people not taking the incident of violence you’ve mentioned seriously because you were “beaten up by a girl” or something stupid like that? That’s misogyny.

You’re right inasmuch as you think it’s important we end both, but you’re wrong if you think misandry is this huge problem that needs to be dealt with right away or everything is lost. As far as I can tell, victims of misandrist violence such as yourself are rather rare. Female victims of sexual assault, rape, and spousal abuse are all too common.

But on the Rush thing. People don’t understand that this is just the cherry on top of the sundae. He has been a misogynistic twit (racist, etc…) for so long that it is just time to put an end to it. Women have busy lives and they tend to try to allow live and let live for the most part but there comes a time to stand up and take action. The time is now.

his woman could, without any trace of shame, any trace of embarrassment, give open testimony before the entire United States of America, about how much promiscuous sex she and her classmates are having.

Actually she didn’t, which means Fischer is a liar.

But regardless, the vast majority of the country thinks there is nothing shameful or embarrassing about promiscuous sex. Someone invent a time machine for Fischer the liar so he can go back to 1952. Or maybe he should move to Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan where his ideas about sex won’t seem so out of place.

Aww, I vote for giving matriarchy the benefit of the doubt. He admitted he was wrong about something, and that is pretty rare for the people who come to Pharyngula to troll.

Although I seriously suspect that matriarchy actually is rather spoiled, contrary to one of his recent comments. (Not intended as an insult, I was pretty spoiled as a child, it’s something that can be outgrown.)

I don’t really care if you believe me or not. I got verbally and emotionally abused for a year by a female, and part of the reason for it was that I was male and she knew she could get away with it, because that’s seen as okay. But! Happily, that is no longer happening.

There are rather more important issues involved in the whole contraception debate. Such as separation of church and state. The bottom line is that religious beliefs cannot be allowed to influence state-sanctioned legal policy. Given that the leading Republican candidates include a dedicated Mormon and a rabid Catholic, this is a matter of some concern.

What it really indicates is that these religious outfits would far rather establish a Saudi Arabian or Israeli type merger of church and state, which is something any decent American citizen ought to oppose.

Well, IIRC Walton looked a whole lot like a troll when he first started posting here and thanks to interventions by the hoard it has seemed to me like he’s really educated himself on social justice issues and has said a lot of good stuff about them since then. I personally think if someone demonstrates that capacity to admit they’re wrong then there’s a good chance they can be educated and in that case it’s probably better not to just dismiss them as a troll. In my opinion, it’s better to take the chance that the person is being sincere and to try to win them over as an ally rather than dismiss them as a troll and cement their skepticism towards the thing you were trying to educate them about.

But this is all just my opinion which is why I said “I vote” instead of “I demand” or anything similar that would imply that my opinion should dictate what everyone’s behavior should be. Do as you will (which I’m sure you were already doing).

Also Matriarchy, I do not believe you. Eeveryone knows most men like you lie about being victims, right Datasolution?

I wonder if Matriarchy believes his own allegations*? He seems to agree with Datasolution that claims like the one Matriarchy made should be doubted.

More from Matriarchy, from the link that chigau kindly provided,

I haven’t actually had contact with a female who is not a relative, so I suppose I’m not really qualified to speak on the subject, but people have told me that false allegations have happened. It’s a small minority, but still.

Um, ok, I never said that false rape allegations occur at a higher rate than false allegations re. other crimes… actually, I’m sure they don’t. Just that they happen, and since rape is probably the most reviled crime in our culture (moreso than murder, even), it’s important to remind ourselves that we have a court system for a reason. Let them do the work, impartially.

So should we assume your allegations are false, Matriarchy? Or should we wait for a court to find that your claims have merit? Or is the skepticism towards claims of abuse only warranted when it is a woman making the claim?

*for the record, I do not actually doubt your claims, Matriarchy. Just hoping you will reflect more about your earlier comments.

That was very refreshing and interesting to see on this blog so don’t be discouraged by moronic islam apologists and radical feminists here.

The idea of “male-disposability” is one of the dumbest I’ve ever heard. Men are privileged in the USA on account of their gender. Don’t deny reality. A few men experiencing actual* sexism towards them, is shitty, but is not a pervasive problem in our culture. There are many peer reviewed, scholarly articles that one can point to to show how women are hurt from sexism in our culture (lower pay, less chance of being published, less chance of being promoted). Can you show me a scholarly article that discusses the rampant misandry that your deluded mind perceives?

And Islam apologists? Huh? The mythology of Islam is just as false as any other. PZ and others on this blog have no problem saying so. That is pretty much the opposite of Islamic apologetics. Sorry we are not bigoted enough towards Muslims while we attack the falsity of Islam.

Matriarchy is a liar. He’s a former manboobz troll who’s entire schtick was massive lying. Those of you who believe him have very admirable instincts, of course, but in this case, you are dealing with a serial liar who has invented at least 6 different identities. He’s just a privileged little white boy who goes to Brown University on his mother’s dime. The only shit he’s put up with is not getting laid. I’m also amused as hell to watch what happens when he’s on a blog where inanity is a banning offense and people take even less kindly to stupidity XD

Well, IIRC Walton looked a whole lot like a troll when he first started posting here and thanks to interventions by the hoard it has seemed to me like he’s really educated himself on social justice issues and has said a lot of good stuff about them since then.

You would be, and I’m not joking here, the 15th or 16th unfortunate to waste their brainspace on what could have been here, at the absolute least. I envy your humanity, but not so much the needless and fruitless stress.

On topic, Maher and Adams are the ones who piss me off second most, because the idiots are sure to make convenient little straw men on their respective platforms. OTOH, Adams’ will probably just be a complete bungling, considering his criticisms are basically from outer space.

And now I know…the REST of the story. (Does anyone else miss Paul Harvey as much as I do?)

Scott Adams seems to have decided to be a professional troll. I’m pretty sure he’s doing it to promote traffic and make advertising money. I suspect his opinions have a lot less influence than Rush Limbaugh’s so I’m going to try not to waste any attention on Adams.

Maher is…frustrating. I’ve decided not to take him seriously either, chalking up the stuff he’s right about to the broken clock principle.

On the issue of condom ads Saskatoon Transit buses have had condom advertising amongst their interior ads for several years. I think there may have been at least one external condom ad for a while as well. If anyone complained about them it didn’t make the press here.

right at the very start he brings up college students that is the hot button word for his audience that is the hook to bring out the resentment of “smart people” all the rest is just the gathering up of more crap as the resentment builds. He always does it that way. it is always they think they are better than you because :*:*.
he just keeps pounding on that one spot until the audience is frothing at the brain and “mega dittos”
he is so predictable and so unimaginative that the only thing he can do is be the jerk on the radio. he only has the one trick but it works with his well trained audience maybe not so well with his customers/sponsors or people who can actually think.

Oh god he actually pulled out his “I have a high IQ” on a blog with an abnormally high distribution of phds. PZ, please don’t ban him until the regulars stop eating him XD

He also seems to be labouring under the delusion that the possession of a high IQ in and of itself means that a person is automatically right on a given topic. Unfortunately for Matriarchy, intelligence alone is no guarentee that a person cannot fall foul of logical fallacies or have their rationality and impartiality subverted by preconceptions, and even the most brilliant person can come to an erroneous conclusion if the data available to them is poor or incomplete.

I read somewhere that Carl Sagan once said that being a genius is no excuse for being wrong.

Of course, this could also simply be a case of runaway Dunning-Kruger syndrome on Matriarchy’s part…

By the way, I’d be careful about goading me into a debate. FYI, I have a high IQ, and I just got done reading the Canterbury Tales. My brain is firing on all cylinders, and let me tell you, it’s formidable.

This comment belongs in some kind of hall of fame. I laughed, I cried. I read it over and over.
I’m with Rutee. This could be startfart quality commentary.

On the issue of condom ads Saskatoon Transit buses have had condom advertising amongst their interior ads for several years. I think there may have been at least one external condom ad for a while as well. If anyone complained about them it didn’t make the press here.

Oh yeah, Trojan gets lots of ads on TV in the US, last I watched TV. Hm, that’s odd, I figured places that were okayer with sex would have these adds.

There’s also the estimated 1% of the population that falls into the asexual/nonsexual end of the spectrum or the shades of grey leading up to it.

I know, I know – adding all these extra qualifiers detracts from the nice sound bytes, but here on the Side of Right we come equipped with our primary weapon: Facts and Footnotes. Er, TWO! Two weapons of facts, footnotes and Monty Python-esque humour*!

The ‘nym is a giveaway. Calling oneself ‘matriarchy’ looks suspiciously like a ham-fisted commentary on the concept of patriarchy, the existence of which is vehemently denied by many privileged and ardent lovers of the status quo. Might as well call oneself ‘andronist.’

matriarchy wrote:

I have been the victim of gendered violence myself

and

I got verbally and emotionally abused for a year by a female

Are you conflating verbal abuse with physical violence, or did you switch anecdotes?

By the way, I’d be careful about goading me into a debate. FYI, I have a high IQ, and I just got done reading the Canterbury Tales.

Having a high IQ does not inoculate one from prejudice. Reading Canterbury Tales does not automatically transmute one into a skilled rhetorician.

Well, IIRC Walton looked a whole lot like a troll when he first started posting here

I never thought he looked like a troll. Walton was always obviously scrupulously honest, and also clearly intelligent. Contra-indications for a troll. He just said some very unenlightened things sometimes.

By the way, I’d be careful about goading me into a debate. FYI, I have a high IQ, and I just got done reading the Canterbury Tales.

Look out, everyone! Matriarchy has a high IQ and is not afraid to use it! This assertion of vast intelligence is backed up with the evidence of the further assertion that matriarchy just got done reading Canterbury Tales! In the original sanskrit, no less.

I don’t really know anything about him before then, but his own posts, before he learned to spoof his ID, outed his status as a brown university student, and under fire he admitted it was his mom paying for it.

So not only is he a misogynist fuckwit, but he’s a misogynist fuckwit utterly dependent on a woman, for the immediate and foreseeable future. He had very recognizable and common tics that outted his sock puppet attempts even after he learned how to spoof an IP Address, as well as common arguments. One was Male Disposability, which he got from Warren Farrell (He thinks Farrell’s just the smartest, whereas people who know sociology or history can kinda laugh their asses off at him).

I’m betting the “Emotional abuse” is just like when he claimed women were spitting on him.

I nominate this quote for the Dunning-Kruger award for March 2012 (the Dunnies, maybe? Not to be confused with The Dundies.).

…What are the Dundies? Should I feel fear, or is this just an award show for hardy australian survivalists?

Also, I’d say Walton *was* a troll when he first started posting here; one of dozens of free market libertarian trolls. That he morphed into a good human being is, you know, fantastic, but while it’s a great thing to remember that trolls are humans (If generally shitty ones), he’s also basically the only troll who changed. Not exactly great evidence that people should be *nice* to trolls. XD

sqlrob @115
Ah yeah that is very bad. I did say “basically”! I was really attacking the equation of it with Saudi Arabia. In all basically secular countries with large religious majorities the religious will still exercise a lot of pressure on governments, this happens not just in Israel but in India, Turkey and of course America. It doesn’t make sense to consider a state non-secular the moment one concession (even a big one) is made to a religion, otherwise no state would be considered secular. I’d say a state only permanently merges church and state when it establishes a state church or modifies its constitution to explicitly refer to a religion.

That he morphed into a good human being is, you know, fantastic, but while it’s a great thing to remember that trolls are humans (If generally shitty ones), he’s also basically the only troll who changed.

Well that’s a good point, especially when considered alongside echidna’s take from a few comments earlier that Walton was misinformed but ultimately sincere and so not really a troll in the first place. Changing minds on the internet is hard. Especially when there isn’t actually a mind on the other side to be changed.

It really exposes these people for what they are: anti-sex, anti-human prudes. Fuck the Puritans. Please.

I don’t agree with how they said it or with the religious BS, but there _is_ a valid point nestled down inside the whole argument.

Is it right for some people to believe that everybody else should feel obligated to bankroll their recreational indulgences? Yeah, sex is fun. No, people should not ever feel that they are devoid of responsibility for participating in the act lightly and without regard of consequence.

Is it right for some people to believe that everybody else should feel obligated to bankroll their recreational indulgences? Yeah, sex is fun. No, people should not ever feel that they are devoid of responsibility for participating in the act lightly and without regard of consequence.

Umm, how about you do the 2 minutes of research required to figure out what this debate is actually about and why what you wrote here is a steaming pile of irrelevancy?

Is it right for some people to believe that everybody else should feel obligated to bankroll their recreational indulgences? Yeah, sex is fun. No, people should not ever feel that they are devoid of responsibility for participating in the act lightly and without regard of consequence.

You do realize that the genesis of this is that Rush didn’t like a woman who testified that insurance companies need to cover contraception, right? THey’re taking responsibility, and they’re not even being ‘bankrolled’ so much as getting money they already paid back. Misogynistic nitwit.

Should insurance companies cover your broken leg you got skiing?
—————
that is how health insurance works. Why is that so hard to understand? Or is it that taking that line is the way the right has chosen to get out the vote by pushing resentment and “moral indignation” thereby maintaining political power through emotional manipulation of the undereducated and the sheeple.

Is it right for some people to believe that everybody else should feel obligated to bankroll their recreational indulgences? Yeah, sex is fun. No, people should not ever feel that they are devoid of responsibility for participating in the act lightly and without regard of consequence.

well, if you WANNA play oppression olympics, fine. I see your year of verbal and emotional abuse, and raise one count of physical gendered violence that had me sporting a black eye for weeks. (and I’m probably one of the least abused people who aren’t a Mr. Whitey C. McStraighterson)

Also, I bet my IQ is higher than yours. And I know how to use mine better, too.

Um, ok, Rutee, yeah my mom is paying for my university, but I never “admitted” it, because I’m not ashamed. I’ll be taking care of her when she’s older. I work hard in my classes, I get a good job, she’s more comfortable when she starts wearing a diaper and all that. So really, it’s an investment on her part, and you can stick it up your butt.

Heya PZ! Normally quite a fan, just want to point out one small correction

Don’t do this. PZ is a big boy now. If you’re going to correct him (and I agree that what you’re pointing out here absolutely should be pointed out), you don’t have to coddle him first. He can handle it, trust me. The man opens beer kegs with his teeth. Or was that cans? Either way, fun night.

By the way, I’d be careful about goading me into a debate. FYI, I have a high IQ, and I just got done reading the Canterbury Tales. My brain is firing on all cylinders, and let me tell you, it’s formidable.

Wow, are you saying that emotional abuse is nothing more than “getting yelled at”? Holy shit.

no, but nice try at deflecting (also, your refusal to engage has been duly noted. why are you not responding to my correction of your mis-reading of my post, or the comments by people who said that physical abuse rarely happens without emotional abuse?)

Don’t do this. PZ is a big boy now. If you’re going to correct him (and I agree that what you’re pointing out here absolutely should be pointed out), you don’t have to coddle him first. He can handle it, trust me. The man opens beer kegs with his teeth. Or was that cans? Either way, fun night.

Didn’t think that counted as ‘coddling’ or trying to soften anything… Next time though I’ll maybe try opening with some cuttling to squishen the blow instead?

Wow… the identity politics here are ridiculous. I didn’t realize you had to show your oppression credits at the door before you could claim any hardship. I’m getting sort of angry, tbh. You guys know shit about me.

I’m afraid I can’t claim too many victim credits because I’m white, male, straight, and middle class, so I guess I can’t be abused, even though I have been. Technically I’m not able-bodied, if that counts for something?

Wow, are you saying that emotional abuse is nothing more than “getting yelled at”? Holy shit.

I’m calling you out for conflating verbal abuse with physical violence, and pointing out your insensitivity to victims of physical violence by implicitly stating that its effects do not ‘get in the brain’ of the abused.

Is it right for some people to believe that everybody else should feel obligated to bankroll their recreational indulgences? Yeah, sex is fun. No, people should not ever feel that they are devoid of responsibility for participating in the act lightly and without regard of consequence.

Taking contraception to prevent the “consequence” of pregnancy is being responsible, idiot.

Also, pregnancy is about as inevitable a consequence of having sex as drowning is an inevitable consequence of swimming. You don’t get pregnant every time you have sex but it’s a risk so you take precautions. And really, there is something seriously fucked up about viewing pregnancy and parenthood as a “consequence” that a woman must be punished with for having sex for reasons other than procreation. Pregnancy and having a child should be nothing less than WANTED.

I’m not “conflating” anything. I’m just saying, emotional abuse can be just as damaging as physical violence. People are sitting here on their asses presuming to judge my own experience with abuse as trivial or meaningless because I wasn’t actually physically harmed. Um, sorry, that’s not your fucking jurisdiction, so back off.

I’m afraid I can’t claim too many victim credits because I’m white, male, straight, and middle class, so I guess I can’t be abused, even though I have been. Technically I’m not able-bodied, if that counts for something?

That’s a whole lotta strawmen you got there. No one has ever said any of those things prevent you from being a victim. Try again.

People are sitting here on their asses presuming to judge my own experience with abuse as trivial or meaningless because I wasn’t actually physically harmed.

Well, you haven’t actually conveyed any useful information that would elicit a more sympathetic response. If you want to claim that you have been abused, be at least mindful that there are some people on this thread who have experienced some truly horrific things, both physically and emotionally.

Just making a claim as baldly as you have will raise hackles, and not help your argument in the slightest. You are showing no evidence that you are doing anything other than stirring the pot.

WTF, who is we? and why give a threat to the entire country based on the asshattery of the media conservatives?

matriarchy, I assume this is humor?
<blockquote By the way, I’d be careful about goading me into a debate. FYI, I have a high IQ, and I just got done reading the Canterbury Tales. My brain is firing on all cylinders, and let me tell you, it’s formidable.

Did you think the taunting would make it more or less likely you’d be engaged? Is this fair warning that you’ll be so awesome that your opponent will cry mercy and bow down?

While being smart is often helpful, don’t assume it applies to how well your writing or arguments come off in blog posts.

You were emotionally abused? Was that before women spit on you, or after? And where on the timeline does your working in a factory come into this? And can you reconcile all this with being an adult in the 60s? (Hint: Serial Liars are not trusted by people familiar with them)

So really, it’s an investment on her part, and you can stick it up your butt.

I oculdn’t care less about the part where she helps you, dude; my dad is why I got through school. I’ll pay him back when he’s old. But does your mother know all the misogynistic shit you think about women? And do you not grasp the irony of dependence on that which you hate, or is it too beyond the reach of your ‘high IQ’?

Wow… the identity politics here are ridiculous. I didn’t realize you had to show your oppression credits at the door before you could claim any hardship. I’m getting sort of angry, tbh. You guys know shit about me.

I’m afraid I can’t claim too many victim credits because I’m white, male, straight, and middle class, so I guess I can’t be abused, even though I have been. Technically I’m not able-bodied, if that counts for something?

You are such a fucking crybaby. I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt but you can’t seem to do anything but try to make this a pity party for special widdle you.

Stop crying. All anyone is saying is that you’re not the only person to have ever been abused. That other people have also experienced abuse and in many cases worse abuse than you have experienced. To say physical abuse is worse in almost every way than emotional abuse (and in no small part because physical abuse almost always entails emotional abuse) is not to say that your incident of abuse “doesn’t count.” Putting something in perspective does not necessarily trivialize it. We (or some of us) acknowledge your abuse. And it was wrong and that person shouldn’t have abused you.

Stop crying about how people aren’t being gentle enough with your precious flower-petal feelings and engage with the actual arguments, huh? Your inane deflections just erode whatever tiny amount of support you might have had here.

By the way, I’d be careful about goading me into a debate. FYI, I have a high IQ, and I just got done reading the Canterbury Tales. My brain is firing on all cylinders, and let me tell you, it’s formidable.

This comment has got to be the most blatant demonstration of utter stupidity I have ever seen. Actual intelligent people NEVER declare their own intelligence like this, because they are intelligent enough to recognize just how hollow and pathetic it sounds. Intelligent people DEMONSTRATE their intelligence with their words and actions. I suppose this option is just not within matriachy’s capacity.

Also, the problem with matriarchy and datasolution has nothing to do with their intelligence or lack thereof. It has to do with their moral character, and lack thereof.

And finally, high IQ simply means GIGO at a higher rate and greater volume of G.

were you the one posting about male disposability

Male “disposability” is a prime characteristic of the patriarchy. It’s how the minority of males in power deal with the potential threat of competition from the majority of males who are not in power. (It’s PHMT). The cultural milieu that breeds and encourages male disposability is one of things feminism fights against. These disposable males are all the sons and brothers (perhaps a little less frequently fathers) of women.

OK, I have been the victim of gendered violence myself, so… the real-world effects of misandry aren’t nil.

Most of the most egregious and harmful examples of “misandry” are products of the patriarchy, and again stem from the how the system is set up by the minority of males in power to keep them in power and protect them from competition from other males.

Um, not all violence against women is “misogynist violence”.

And those types of violence are not the types of violence we refer to when we use the term “misogynistic violence.” (Oh, and providing a few illustrative examples when making a claim like this one is expected of people with 3-digit IQs).

Also, I’m not an 8th grader, butthead.

And so you illustrate this by using third grade language. Impressive. That 3 digit IQ is really churning there.

I’m not “conflating” anything.

Yes, you are. And if you actually had a three-digit IQ, you should have been able to recognize that, and paused to rephrase your comment before blurting it out and proving yourself an evil fool.

I’m just saying, emotional abuse can be just as damaging as physical violence.

You’re saying that now. You said initially that you were the victim of violence. But then later you wrote that it was actually verbal abuse. You’re writing now that you think the two can be equally damaging, but that doesn’t really square with your statement that “[e]motional stuff gets into yer brain.” In my post at #137, I stated explicitly what was implicit in your statement.

People are sitting here on their asses presuming to judge my own experience with abuse as trivial or meaningless because I wasn’t actually physically harmed. Um, sorry, that’s not your fucking jurisdiction, so back off.

No one is claiming jurisdiction, as far as I can see. But if you freely bring up personal details in a thread, you can – and should – expect them to be a subject of discussion. If you don’t want people commenting on the personal details of your life, don’t write about them in an open forum. Especially if you are going to all but ensure that you are universally disliked by prefacing them with brazen demonstrations of braggadocio.

Does warning everyone about your high IQ and formidable brain make you many friends in meatspace? Because it’s not likely to win you many fans here, where advanced degrees are almost as common as use of the word ‘fuck.’

Male “disposability” is a prime characteristic of the patriarchy. It’s how the minority of males in power deal with the potential threat of competition from the majority of males who are not in power. (It’s PHMT). The cultural milieu that breeds and encourages male disposability is one of things feminism fights against. These disposable males are all the sons and brothers (perhaps a little less frequently fathers) of women.

I’d argue that while men at the top benefit more, men as a class benefit from military service being exclusively male. The inability to serve has frequently been held against women, and AFAIK, soldierdom’s position as a shitty job is… somewhat oversold (at least overall in history). Frankly, it’s better than farming in most societies, which kinda puts it above most folks to begin with, and that’s not even getting into warrior classes (EG Kshatriya, Mameluks, Ottomans, Knights…) Even US soldiers get a pretty good deal, with lifelong health care (This is specifically a good deal because US healthcare is not state provided, true, so a more equitable system would remove this advantage). It’s not exactly a barrel of monkeys, of course, and even as a class advantage (Superior pay compared to many, if not all, low status jobs) it has pretty serious downsides even discounting lethality (Redcoat peons got a pretty decent deal, but that didn’t help everyone the Crown press ganged into their navy, f’rex). Basically what I’m saying is that while I would argue it’s an advantage, it’s far more nuanced than just “Men make up the bulk of armies, and that outright sucks for men” (It’s also not nearly as true as a lot of people think, but that’s a *seperate* matter I don’t feel like tackling right now)

meh; “disposability” of men in the historical sense (i.e. what to do with the 2nd, 3rd etc. sons of landed folks) which resulted in soldiers and clergy still gave these “disposable” non-heirs more power than the women had; who incidentally were also non-heirs.

as for poor dudes… what rutee said: the army fed and clothed them, and that was something poor women didn’t get.

as for men doing dangerous jobs, in general: it’s not like they’ve been welcoming women with open arms to relieve them of that burden. Instead, they’ve been doing all they could to keep women out of these jobs, either by law or by harassment (female miners would be an example of this)

Wow, your insurance has a “recreational activities” exclusion? How does that read?

it’s the famous “puritan libertarian” policy. for example, they cover food-related medical conditions only if nutritious, home-cooked gruel is involved; food-poisoning from that new funky restaurant? sorry, eating out is a “recreational activity”. choking on a pretzel? should have eaten something other than a snack, since snacks are recreational.

Don’t generalize, lol. I’m a gay atheist and sex is pointless to me; I don’t enjoy (or not enjoy- it does nothing for me one way or the other) HOWEVER- I’m not going to tell anyone that they cannot have sex with whoever consents to doing so.

Odd that you claim that sex is hardly pointless to you when you express a sexual orientation.

1)i don’t think “hardly pointless” works here, unless I don’t get something about this sentence.
2)if theoutsider is homoromantic and asexual (or something like), he’s gay even with no interest in sex. sexual orientation is about attraction more than about sex.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say Matriarchy is a Poe because no one can be this dumb…

Also, cool story sis time…

I teach English 101 and I use Scott Adams’ horrible article, Pegs and Holes, as a source for an argument essay. Basically, I ask my freshmen to argue for the article, then argue against it, then to argue for whatever side they want to take while acknowledging the opposition (rather than shrugging them off with a “that’s crazy!”).

In previous semesters, this has worked fine. Most of the class HATES Adams’ misogynistic bullshit, but they concede that he has a point about society hemming both genders in. But this semester it was a total fail because…well, most of the class just kinda agreed with Adams that men are victims and women are horrible. It was ~awful~ So yeah…have to seriously rethink this assignment…

Sorry, I didn’t mean to stir up such a beat down. I’ll just go back to not finding any pleasure in sex and knowing that I’m gay, and I’ll let someone else find a way to pigeon hole me.

Hey, don’t worry about it. I think most of us get it. I’m bi and I’m not the biggest fan of sex anymore either. Not religious guilt, just history and priorities. I’m hoping it comes back with time, but it’s not the worst thing in the world, and certainly doesn’t mean I don’t have an orientation anymore *shrug* Some people just don’t enjoy it all that much.

It doesn’t make sense to consider a state non-secular the moment one concession (even a big one) is made to a religion, otherwise no state would be considered secular.

What is the one concession Israel has made to religion?
The ban of public transportation on Sabbath?
The enforcement of kashrut in all government institutions?
The ban on breeding pigs?
The exemption of (state-funded) Haredi schools from having to teach any of the subjects on the state’s curriculum?
The lack of secular marriage as an institution?

I didn’t bother watching the Fischer vid. He’s a cretin.
Bill Maher is wrong. He’s so often wrong that he’s more like a stopped clock. Right twice a day.
thankfully, we had a nice dose of Jon Stewart to cheer things up at the end.

I’ll close by noting that in the computer game The Sims 3, evil sims gain the entertainment option “Troll forums” when using the computer.

Hate to defend #RushLimbaugh but he apologized, liberals looking bad not accepting. Also hate intimidation by sponsor pullout

So that’s what really bothers Mr. Maher (Maher? Mahr? whatever..).
The only difference between him and Rush is (some)politics.
Hitting where the money is makes him nervous.
When you make a living as a professional bully the paycheck is the one and only sacred cow.Oh noes, not the sponsers. That’s unsportsmanlike.

I guess we knew that about these types already but it’s suprising to see it presented up front in this way.

Word to the wise: when [matriarchy] says he has physical disabilities, he means that he’s short and has a lazy eye.

…and under some pretty intensive cross-examination on Manboobz it turned out that he was in fact of perfectly average height, and his lazy eye was a lot less visible to others than it was to him.

So the general consensus was that this came fairly low, if not bottom, of the list of reasons why he’s still a deeply frustrated virgin at the age of 19/20. Slightly higher up the list were:

• his cluelessness;
• his charmlessness;
• his aggressive obnoxiousness;
• his whininess;
• his persistent belief that he’s somehow an oppressed minority despite revealing that he’s actually an extremely privileged parentally-funded white university student;
• his IQ boasting (given the mockery that ensued last time, I’m amazed that he pulled that stunt again);
• his lies (such as claiming he’d just stumbled upon Paul Elam’s blog, when he’s been reading it for months);
• his insistence on referring to women as “females”, “wimminz”, “alpha bitches” and, most famously, “alpha FUCK bitches”, despite being called out on it many, many times;
• his inability to empathise;
• his anger management problems…

…and many, many other issues that don’t exactly scream “catch of the century”, quite a few of which he’s demonstrated here.

And why he thought he’d get a better reception here after months of being skewered and filleted by the Manboobz commenters is a mystery on a par with the fact that Rick Santorum’s speeches aren’t greeted with the mockery and laughter that they’d trigger in pretty much any European country.

But here’s the really bizarre thing: he’s in therapy already. Or at least he claims to be.

Anyway, I have been reading Datasolution’s, Matriarchy’s and sundry MRA’s posts. I have read all of the cesspit threads at ERV, listened to hours of Rush Limbaugh and I have come to the conclusion that there is something there. After all, we’ve just had the 29th of February, where women can overturn the laws of physics and propose marriage to men, and now International Women’s Day? It’s too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence, it must be a conspiracy.

I’m going to be hiding indoors from now on in order to hide from the marauding packs of ravenous women who just want to leap on me, make snoo-snoo with me, and then claim I raped them to absolve themselves of their slutty, slutty ways (whilst making me pay for contraceptive pills* AND wear condoms**, those evil feminazis!). I shall be employing suitable deterrents by wearing Lynx*** deodorant and watching Top Gear reruns.****

Fear them. Fear those women. They may hurt my fee-fees. My precious, precious man fee-fees. They may use harsh language and not have sex with me. ME! I know right? Unbelievable. It’s almost like they have minds of their own.

Louis

* Why should I pay for sluts? Nasty sluts with their not wanting to have babies! Oh poor men…and me! The REAL victim in all of this. After all 0.000001% of my taxes go on some woman’s hoo-hoo problems. It’s against Jesus and Family and stuff.

** Condoms feel icky and are a well known piece of misandrist evil. Women should keep their vaginas lubricated, healthy and clean for my use at all times and they should be chewing contraceptive pills like gum. Pills they pay for themselves out of their high paid jobs which they steal from men. Probably all that maternity benefit can be used or something.

*** Axe in the US I believe. The odiousness of this product needs no elaboration.

P.S. I have a very, very high I.Q. and so I am right. Also, I might get angry so be afraid. I’ve just finished reading “See Spot Run” and am fully erect, so watch out.

P.P.S. Don’t forget I am severely disabled and have been the victim of hideous violence. I stubbed my toe on the tyre of the Porsche my mother bought me the other day and am walking with a slight limp. And once, the barista at Starbucks gave me an orange and lemon muffin instead of a low fat blueberry muffin. I’m sure she did it because I was a man. I spent months begging that barista to have sex with me. I called her a bitch and everything, treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen right guys? Nothing. If that isn’t emotional violence, well I don’t know what is.

Your talent as mimic is impressive. It is uncanny, for a second it was like there were two Matriarchys on the thread. It was all there – the paranoid delusions, the massive sense of entitlement, the perverse combination of intellectual bragging and attempts to claim first place in the oppression olympics, the bubbling undercurrent of misogynist resentment of ‘slutty’ women who simply refuse to have sex with those who are deserving…

I have often had similar thoughts about the programme myself – and Clarkson is probably the worst offender of the three, not that I imagine that he will ever have the capacity for introspection to realise what am awful parody of himself he has become.

I stubbed my toe on the tyre of the Porsche my mother bought me the other day and am walking with a slight limp. And once, the barista at Starbucks gave me an orange and lemon muffin instead of a low fat blueberry muffin. I’m sure she did it because I was a man. I spent months begging that barista to have sex with me. I called her a bitch and everything, treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen right guys? Nothing. If that isn’t emotional violence, well I don’t know what is.

Yup, I think you have nailed Matriarchy’s definition of ‘disposeable manhood’ right there…

I imagine you are in need of same extra-strength brain-bleach after crawling through Matriachy’s headspace. I know I have some lying around here somewhere, I keep a stash of it handy for whenever I wind up trawling through a thread infested by MRAs.

Aaaaaaand… while your stupid country debates about an ancient thing like public access to brth control, in my country, the rule of naked men nailed to crosses in Justice offices finally ended: the Christians will have to take them to their filthy temples instead.

WE’RE COMING TO TAKE YOUR PLACE, UNITED STUPIDS OF AMERICA! RUN BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE! WE’LL HAVE NO MERCY FOR PURITANS!

I meant it as a compliment, but in retrospect I can see no way of saying “you are really good at channeling the sense of entitlement and wounded fee-fees of a known misogynist troll” that wouldn’t come across as insulting.

As for brain bleach, it’s okay, I’ve decided to drink heavily instead. The brain damage should erase the feelings nicely.

Sounds a bit more useful in this context than in vino veritas since the truth is self-evident – we already know that matriarchy is a disengenuous, whiny misogynist jerk* – what is needed is a means of forgeting that people like him even exist. Here’s hoping you can get to that level of alcohol induced oblivion without poisoning yourself…

—————————————————————-

* And if this is Matriarchy sober, I shudder to think what he would be like after his inhibitions (such as they are) have been eroded by liquor.

I wonder if these dummies realise that these “sluts” might have sex only once in two months but still need to take a pill every single day to prevent pregnancy.

Yes, like student nurse Ben Cochran, who famously seemed to think that the amount of oral contraceptives increased in quantity the more one had sex, which led to the immortal complaint that “not even porn stars need that much birth control.”

He must have been about Matriarchy/MRAL’s age, though I’m pretty sure that when I hit twenty I was broadly familiar with how oral contraceptives worked despite being the wrong gender to actually take them.

But near-total (and, in Cochran’s case, deeply embarrassing) ignorance of a subject has never stopped people like that from sounding off.

Stephen Fry said of him that if he weren’t funny and generally quite witty then he would be awfully tiresome as the voice of opposition to all things “PC” he claims to be. I think dear Stephen was being a mite generous.

I have various family members who practically worship Clarkson, and who lack his amusement value. They also read the Daily Mail and think that Those Gheys Are Out To Get Them (With Their Agenda). And that’s just the start of the joys.

It all makes one rather tired and weary. I think I shall indulge in a spot more gin.

[Louis drunkenly staggers up to Gregory Greenwood, reeking of booze and blatant plagiarism of Brownian and Otrame’s third person descriptive narrative elsewhere, and tells him

“Ish awlrite, I luvsh you, you’re like my besht friend or shomething. I needsh a kebab”.

Louis then wobbles down the street in search of a very seriously overrated pseudo meal comprising reconstituted potato scraps masquerading as “fries” and the sweepings of the abattoir floor bound together with some salt, fat, and ball sweat, placed on a skewer and roasted on a plinth for weeks on end in defiance of anything resembling microbiological awareness. As Louis is waiting for his repast to be appropriately packaged, he vomits on the pavement and has a minor scuffle with someone who was “looking at his bird funny”, as is Right, Proper and Traditional.]

Ahhhh Ben Cochran. I’d almost forgotten about that joyful little ball of glee making wonder. When a man tires of waiting to see a doctor whilst a “gaggle of preemie sluts could get a free pass on harlotry”, he tires of life.

Far be it from me to advocate physical violence*, but I seem to remember when reading about the case of poor, oppressed little Ben that I mentally elevated him to the status of “Eminently Punchable”.

Louis

* I really don’t advocate physical violence. I sometimes want to, oh dear FSM do I want to, but I don’t. Not even on Sundays. Not even with the wind behind me. Not even upon the person of Piers Morgan…

I’d say a state only permanently merges church and state when it establishes a state church or modifies its constitution to explicitly refer to a religion.

Well, Israel has definitely done the first, as the link above shows. Two sects are officially established, both Orthodox, and they have significant power over immigration as well. (Lots of other little things, but marriage, divorce, and immigration are very big issues worth getting very upset about.) The most likely resolution to this, sometime in the next couple decades, will be to give official status to more sects.

The second is tricky. Technically speaking, Israel doesn’t have a constitution. Of course they do have some structure which functions like a constitution, called the Basic Laws. One of these is the Jerusalem Law, which includes this very broad provision:

“3. The Holy Places shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings towards those places.”

I have various family members who practically worship Clarkson, and who lack his amusement value. They also read the Daily Mail and think that Those Gheys Are Out To Get Them (With Their Agenda). And that’s just the start of the joys.

Enough said, I know just the type. Only yesterday I posted up the story of Britain’s ‘top Catholic bishop’ railing at gay marriage and how it would lead to the descent of soceity into debauchery.

I then had a Catholic friend argue in the comments that gay marriage erodes ‘traditional British values’. Fuck tradition; if that’s an example of British values I want no part of it.

“Traditional British Values”? Like over cooking vegetables and having a moderate peccadillo for spanking? Pah! Such things are outmoded and very unfashionable. We Brits now go for Ferran Adria style spherified, intense vegetable essences and hardcore sadomasochistic dogging.*

As for “top Catholic Bishop”…is that the Catholic Bishop that gets to fuck all the other “bottom” Catholic Bishops? Enquiring minds want to know.**

As Louis is waiting for his repast to be appropriately packaged, he vomits on the pavement and has a minor scuffle with someone who was “looking at his bird funny”, as is Right, Proper and Traditional.]

‘Tis indeed a grand tradition, even a rite of passage, of these British Isles to get completely legless, consume large quantities of biohazardous meat products, and become irrationally violent. A tradition that I – due to my incurable teetotaller-itis, aversion to undercooked, toxic pseudo-meat, and general pacifism – have never been able to take part in.

According to my brother, this state of affairs is nothing less than shameful, but his credibility may have been damaged somewhat in this regard thanks to his store of anecdotes dating from his early twenties that all end the same way; with him unable to remember the night before and waking up in odd places, including various hedgerows…

No need to apologise – re-reading, it’s clear that several thoughts of my own crashed together in my multitasking so that I didn’t get what I wanted to say out clearly enough. I had meant to say something along the lines of appreciating PZ’s fighting for equal rights for minorities and that asexuals/nonsexuals were a minority that he was forgetting about in his post. All that got lost in a massive train-of-thought-wreck somewhere in between though. :P

Don’t generalize, lol. I’m a gay atheist and sex is pointless to me; I don’t enjoy (or not enjoy- it does nothing for me one way or the other) HOWEVER- I’m not going to tell anyone that they cannot have sex with whoever consents to doing so.

John Morales

Odd that you claim that sex is hardly pointless to you when you express a sexual orientation.

If anyone is having trouble reconciling this in their head, might I suggest a quick skim of the asexuality FAQ? Orientation and sex drive aren’t the same thing. Maybe it is for most people, but sexual/nonsexual/gray-sexual/etc. and straight/gay/bi/etc. are completely different dimensions in the whole sexual identity hypersphere.

Er… There’s maybe a total of 10/221 comments relating to that topic, roughly half the number made directly by Matriarch. Granted one leads to sninier discussion than the other, but there’s enough room in a thread this size for a little bit of diversity, especially when it still relates to the OP, right?

I haven’t seen any threads that have been derailed with “ASEXUALS EXIST!” (And it’s been less derailing in this thread than “Traditional British Values” even) – but if it’s something that has come up before/repeatedly and I just never read far enough down into the comments to notice before now then I apologise for retreading over well-worn ground.

Ing, it’s important because the blanket assumption that ‘anyone who doesn’t like sex must be some kind of religious nut’ is one that gets thrown in our faces every time we mention our existence, along with the other usuals (freak/frigid/uptight from the mean, ‘you just haven’t met the right person yet’ from those attempting to be sympathetic). I agreed the last time it came up that PZ hadn’t said anything insensitive that time (post about making sure we don’t frame ‘Pill is sometimes medically necessary’ rather than defending it for all its uses?).

Weirdly the anti-sex religious nuts don’t seem to like us either. Apparently the virtue comes from being tempted and resisting the temptation, those who face no temptation are apparently just freaks.

Louis @202: Amazing, for that you deserve a entire ‘elephant leg’ made of genuine parts of animal! Try not to leave too much of it on the pavement…

It’s really not a number you can pin down, since the right of two individual people to marry and the right of a couple to marry don’t necessarily overlap. A person who has the right to marry can still end up in the non-marriageble boat by virtue of having a partner from the 1/8 you mention, or of a different religion, or of the same gender.

MRAL is barely out of his teens? then he has precisely no basis for saying anything about how women in general never date men who aren’t whatever his definition of “alpha” is, and how he’ll be forever alone blah blah because women are mean blah blah. he hasn’t lived long enough nor met a sufficiently representative sample of the female population to make that determination, not even as “my personal experience” (and on that point he actually does sound like a more stupid, more entitled Walton from a few years back)

Anyone still talking about this? Late as always. Anyhow, back at #172 Rutee was saying Soldiery (that’s a word right?) although being male-dominated is still a respectable, well-compensated (for its class) profession, despite the insistence that it propagates a “disposable men” meme.

But look at this in a greater context. Being a soldier is still respectable and well-compensated because it is male-dominated. Here’s a testable prediction: Just as teaching, academia, secretarial, and nursing professions (to name a few) became integrated the value of those positions and their social cachet and the degree of respect afforded to them diminished. (E.g., being a teacher or a man of letters used to be highly regarded, but as the teaching/tutoring profession opened up to women not only was the value of a teaching job diminished greatly for men, but diminished across the culture. I’d argue that now that any woman can be a teacher (or a student! See also college enrollment rates) even education itself has been devalued. I consider this to to be a factor in America’s anti-intellectual explosion). The test then will be when women are permitted to work in high-risk fields at the same numbers as men, will those same positions be devalued relative to the past.

When 53% of Alaskan crabbers are women, and 53% of our cavalry are women, and 53% of chief-level executives are women, and 53% of engineers are women, will those professions be as highly regarded for their bravery and power and intellect?